top of page

Search results

611 results found with an empty search

  • Global Transport | AlgoSec

    Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. Global Transport Company Moves Firewall Changes Faster Organization Global Transport Industry Transportation Headquarters International Download case study Share Customer
success stories "Automation is definitely the way to go. We can now stay on top of the process even while we migrate our firewalls" Background A global transport and logistics company operates in nearly 100 countries and employs 50,000 people. From its 1000 offices, the company manages supply-chain solutions for thousands of customers all over the world each and every day. Found in virtually every industry, customers range from large international companies that require transportation services by sea and air to medium size business that ship mainly over the road. In addition, the company offers warehousing solutions on every continent to help customers with their logistics. Challenges Operating four major data centers on four continents, the security team’s daily tasks had become overwhelming. For the last several years, the company invested heavily in its rapidly growing IT and network security staff, but at its current size and level of activity, finding enough experienced staffers was practically impossible and too expensive to sustain. The only way forward was a network security automation solution that would: Automate many of the daily change requests across the 50+ firewalls, saving time so that IT and security staffers could work on other critical tasks Eliminate errors in firewall rules Demonstrate the ability to work with Cisco FirePower NGFW in the future The company also presented a special challenge in the form of its already-existing deployment of Cisco Bridge Virtual Interface (BVI) devices. The BVIs essentially act as Layer 2 firewalls. Since they, too, store firewall rules, they have to be included in the automation process. Solution The company brought in three leading Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solutions to compete in a three-month proof-of-concept contest. The combination of AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA) and AlgoSec FireFlow (AFF) stood above the rest. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer ensures security and compliance by providing visibility and analysis into complex network security policies. AlgoSec FireFlow improves security and saves security staffs’ time by automating the entire security policy change process, eliminating manual errors, and reducing risk. Results The two AlgoSec products, Firewall Analyzer and FireFlow went into production in mid-2018 where they have been working ever since, with the following results: Usability was outstanding—the products integrate well and are easy to learn and operate Single-pane-of-glass visibility across the network was suddenly available and useful to the network security staff The automation demonstrated the ability to slash the time required to push firewall changes and to eliminate errors The company found AlgoSec’s Tier 3 support to be impressive. Working directly with Tier 3 personnel and the ever-eager AlgoSec developers, the company’s Senior Technology Architect and other senior security analysts were able to work closely with AlgoSec to solve the BVI conundrum and implement the entire AlgoSec solution. Schedule time with one of our experts

  • AlgoSec Recognized with Established Vendor Designation in 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Network Automation Platforms

    The company received an 89 percent Willingness to Recommend score based on reviews AlgoSec Recognized with Established Vendor Designation in 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Network Automation Platforms The company received an 89 percent Willingness to Recommend score based on reviews June 11, 2024 Speak to one of our experts RIDGEFIELD PARK, NJ – June 11, 2024 – AlgoSec , a global cybersecurity leader, today announced it has been named an Established Vendor in the 2024 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Network Automation Platforms. The Voice of the Customer report synthesizes Gartner Peer Insights’ reviews into insights for IT decision makers. The report details that 89% of AlgoSec end-users are willing to recommend its solutions. AlgoSec received a composite rating of 4.3 based on objective reviews by validated users and customers on: Product Capabilities (4.6/5), Sales Experience (4.45), Deployment Experience (4.6/5) and Support Experience (4.5/5). “The expansion of networks from the data center to cloud and SASE architectures adds new levels of complexity that demand next-generation network security to ensure critical business applications don’t expose organizations to added risk. At the same time, orchestration and automation are vital to keep pace in a constantly evolving landscape,” said Avishai Wool , Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, AlgoSec. “Gartner’s Established Partner designation underscores AlgoSec’s commitment to guiding organizations on their network automation journey. Our certified framework brings together solid security policies, ongoing training, smart technology investments and collaboration between internal and external stakeholders.” Achieving IT security and compliance goals, at scale, is only possible through extensive integration options, total visibility and intelligent automation. The AlgoSec platform is purposely built to simplify and automate security policy management on-premise and in the cloud. Integrated change management automation monitors if security processes remain effective as organization’s requirements evolve, often resulting in real-time implementation of policy changes vs. days. This level of automation frees up team members and resources to focus on what matters most: ensuring the network is secure. To learn more visit: https://www.algosec.com/products/fireflow/ About the Report Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Network Automation Platforms is a document synthesizing Gartner Peer Insights’ reviews into insights for IT decision makers. This aggregated peer perspective, along with the individual detailed reviews, is complementary to Gartner expert research and can play a key role in your buying process, as it focuses on direct peer experiences of implementing and operating a solution. In this document, only vendors with 20 or more eligible published reviews during the specified 18-month submission period are included. About AlgoSec AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity and cloud-native applications throughout their multi-cloud and hybrid network. Trusted by more than 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations, AlgoSec’s application-centric approach enables to securely accelerate business application deployment by centrally managing application connectivity and security policies across the public clouds, private clouds, containers, and on-premises networks. Using its unique vendor-agnostic deep algorithm for intelligent change management automation, AlgoSec enables acceleration of digital transformation projects, helps prevent business application downtime and substantially reduces manual work and exposure to security risks. AlgoSec’s policy management and CNAPP platforms provide a single source for visibility into security and compliance issues within cloud-native applications as well as across the hybrid network environment, to ensure ongoing adherence to internet security standards, industry, and internal regulations. Learn how AlgoSec enables application owners, information security experts, DevSecOps and cloud security teams to deploy business applications up to 10 times faster while maintaining security at https://www.algosec.com . Gartner disclaimer GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark, and PEER INSIGHTS is a trademark and service mark, of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

  • The quick guide to change automation: Turning network security alerts into action | AlgoSec

    If you’ve had enough of manual policy changes but security concerns are holding you back from automating policy change management, this webinar is just for you Webinars The quick guide to change automation: Turning network security alerts into action You use multiple network security controls in your organization, but they just don’t talk to each other. And while you probably get alerts from SIEM solutions and vulnerability scanners, responding to them feels like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. If you’ve had enough of manual policy changes but security concerns are holding you back from automating policy change management, this webinar is just for you. Learn how to transform your network security policies without replacing existing business processes -with enterprise-wide change automation. AlgoSec security expert Avivi Siman Tov will guide you how to: Increase agility, accelerate incident response, and reduce compliance violations and security misconfigurations. Automate security policy changes without breaking network connectivity. Analyze and recommend changes to your network security policies. Push network security policy changes with zero-touch automation to your multi-vendor security devices. Maximize ROI of your existing security controls by automatically analyzing, validating, and implementing network security policy changes. July 21, 2021 Avivi Siman Tov Director of Product Relevant resources FireFlow Demo Watch Video Network management & policy change automation Read an Ebook 6 best practices to stay secure in the hybrid cloud Read Document Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

  • Semiconductor Materials | AlgoSec

    Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. Leading semiconductor and display equipment company reduces risk and increases efficiency Organization Semiconductor Materials Industry Utilities & Energy Headquarters International Download case study Share Customer
success stories "Today, we are many times more efficient and secure thanks to AlgoSec." Background The company’s globally distributed network includes more than ten demilitarized zones (DMZs) with 20 billion events processed per month across the multiple company locations. Firewalls play a vital role in protecting intellectual property at the perimeter level. Every firewall event is logged and processed. Challenges The company’s operations require a very large and diverse network with a large Global Network Security operations team that is spread across the US, EMEA and Asia. The team is responsible for the management of all perimeter and internal security solutions, remote access solutions, customer connectivity solutions and the Security Operations Center (SOC). “We suffered from a lot of network security issues that prevented us from running at the speed of the business,” declared the Senior Manager of Global Security and SOC. Auditing Firewall rules was a long, tedious and painful process Access revocation was performed using a manual reminders process The diverse army of firewalls across the network estate resulted in a non-standard way of making and executing Firewall change requests, requiring many steps to complete the process An out-of-the-box ServiceNow workflow with limited functionality couldn’t keep up Limited reporting capabilities relied on manual data processing There was no way to track performance of SLAs The cumbersome approval process required managers to login to the company ticketing portal Notification of unauthorized or unapproved changes on firewalls was clumsy and slow The company decided to acquire an orchestration and automation solution that could identify and mitigate risky firewall rules. Since the company is subject to many industry and legal regulations, the solution would have to automate compliance reporting as well as ensure accountability for all firewall changes. The solution also would have to integrate into existing ticketing processes and workflows while enabling the company, at its own pace, to advance to more and more automation. Solution The company evaluated several solutions by reviewing their features carefully and putting the best among them to the test in parallel proof of concept projects. The senior manager recalls, “We had a very close look at the leading solutions in the Network Security Policy Management space. One of them definitely stood out from the pack as the superior solution.” The company chose AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA) and AlgoSec FireFlow (AFF), two of the flagship products in the AlgoSec arsenal. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer ensures security and compliance by providing visibility and analysis into complex network security policies. AlgoSec FireFlow improves security and saves security staffs’ time by automating the entire security policy change process, eliminating manual errors, and reducing risk. Results In short order, the company was able to capitalize on the significant advantages of the AlgoSec solution. “It was easy to customize the AlgoSec solution to fit into our environment and enhance it,” continued the senior manager. “But it didn’t take long before we were using the power of the two products to help us adopt better practices for lower risk, higher security, and better efficiency of our team.” Today, the AlgoSec solution is delivering significant improvements to the company’s security processes such as: Visibility across the entire network with an easy-to-use-and-understand executive dashboard Integration with the ticketing tool Proactive analysis of change requests to ensure compliance risk mitigation Prevention of unauthorized changes Elimination of human errors and associated application outages Automatic discovery and mapping of application-connectivity flows Single Sign On (SSO) integration that eliminated static user passwords Support for mobile firewall change-request manager approval “We are a big company with an enormous volume of network-security activity,” stated the manager. “In addition to the superior capabilities of the solution, we greatly appreciated the excellent customization opportunities that AlgoSec’s Professional Services were able to help us with. Today, we are many times more efficient and secure thanks to AlgoSec.” Schedule time with one of our experts

  • DIMENSION DATA | AlgoSec

    Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. Dimension Data Enhances Delivery Of Managed Security Services With AlgoSec Organization DIMENSION DATA Industry Technology Headquarters Australia Download case study Share Customer
success stories "We were fortunate enough to get a double benefit from using AlgoSec in our environment — reducing costs to serve our clients, and expanding our service offerings" IT Solution Provider Streamlines and Automates Security Operations for Clients AlgoSec Business Impact Generate incremental revenue from new policy compliance management services Reduce cost of service for Managed Security Service offering Improve quality of service, assuring a direct and timely response to security issues Background Dimension Data, founded in 1983 and headquartered in Africa, provides global specialized IT services and solutions to help their clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructures. The company serves over 6,000 clients in 58 countries and in all major industry verticals. Dimension Data serves 79% of the Global Fortune Top 100 and 63% of the Global Fortune 500. Challenge In an effort to bring greater efficiency and flexibility, Dimension Data Australia sought to apply security industry best practices and streamlined processes to its delivery methodology. Automation was identified as a key capability that would enable them to reduce service costs and increase quality of service. “The operational management of security infrastructure is quite labor intensive,” remarks Martin Schlatter, Security Services Product Manager at Dimension Data. “The principle reasons for automating managed services are reducing work time, freeing up people for other tasks, and leveraging expertise that is ‘built in’ the automated tool.” By doing this Dimension Data could offer better service to existing clients while expanding their client base. “Additionally, the increased appetite for the Managed Security Services offering has been fueled by an increasing focus on governance, risk management and compliance, and we are expected to deliver faster and more accurate visibility of the security and compliance posture of the network,” explains Schlatter. Solution Dimension Data selected the AlgoSec Security Management Solution as a part of their toolset to deliver their Managed Security Services, which include automated and fully integrated operational management of client security infrastructures. The intelligent automation at the heart of AlgoSec will enable Dimension Data’s team to easily and effectively perform change monitoring, risk assessment, compliance verification and policy optimization for their clients, and act upon the findings quickly. This includes getting rid of unused or obsolete rules in the policy, reordering rules to increase performance and identifying risky rules. Another key factor in the decision making process was the relationship between Dimension Data and AlgoSec. “AlgoSec was deemed most suitable to meet our delivery needs for Managed Services. We selected them for their specific technology fit, and flexibility to assist in growing our managed service business. The partnership element was eventually the overriding factor,” says Schlatter. Results With AlgoSec, Dimension Data is now able to deliver their clients a comprehensive view of the security posture of their network security devices. This is crucial to establishing a baseline understanding of a security network, which makes it possible to truly assess and remediate risks, errors and inefficiencies. The ability to automatically provide this type of information at the most accurate level provides a key competitive differentiator for the company and a large benefit for its clients. “The value-added contribution is saving time, in terms of automation,” remarked Schlatter. “We found a way to reduce costs by automating manual operational tasks. At the same time, we were fortunate enough to leverage AlgoSec to expand our service offerings, so we got a double benefit from using AlgoSec in our environment.” One of the major features of integrating AlgoSec into the Dimension Data solution is the ability to support multiple client domains from a single AlgoSec management console. “This scalable configuration has proven to be invaluable when managing multiple clients with complex multi-vendor, multi-device security environments,” says Schlatter. “It consolidates administrative tasks, cuts time and costs, and ensures proper administration and segregation of duties from our end.” AlgoSec enhances the Managed Security Services offerings by delivering comprehensive risk and compliance management. Dimension Data professionals can generate risk and audit-ready compliance reports in a fraction of the time and with much greater accuracy compared to traditional manual analysis. “Our clients who require ISO 27001 and PCI DSS accreditation have greatly benefitted from this,” said Schlatter. Schedule time with one of our experts

  • CTO Round Table: Fighting Ransomware with Micro-segmentation | AlgoSec

    Discover how micro-segmentation can help you reduce the surface of your network attacks and protect your organization from cyber-attacks. Webinars CTO Round Table: Fighting Ransomware with Micro-segmentation In the past few months, we’ve witnessed a steep rise in ransomware attacks targeting anyone from small companies to large, global enterprises. It seems like no organization is immune to ransomware. So how do you protect your network from such attacks? Join our discussion with AlgoSec CTO Prof. Avishai Wool and Guardicore CTO Ariel Zeitlin, and discover how micro-segmentation can help you reduce your network attack surface and protect your organization from cyber-attacks. Learn: Why micro-segmentation is critical to fighting ransomware and other cyber threats. Common pitfalls organizations face when implementing a micro-segmentation project How to discover applications and their connectivity requirements across complex network environments. How to write micro-segmentation filtering policy within and outside the data center November 17, 2020 Ariel Zeitlin CTO Guardicore Prof. Avishai Wool CTO & Co Founder AlgoSec Relevant resources Defining & Enforcing a Micro-segmentation Strategy Read Document Building a Blueprint for a Successful Micro-segmentation Implementation Keep Reading Ransomware Attack: Best practices to help organizations proactively prevent, contain and respond Keep Reading Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

  • Extend application connectivity visibility into the multicloud with AlgoSec A32.20

    AlgoSec’s latest product release provides application-based risk analysis and enhanced support for cloud platforms Extend application connectivity visibility into the multicloud with AlgoSec A32.20 AlgoSec’s latest product release provides application-based risk analysis and enhanced support for cloud platforms May 3, 2022 Speak to one of our experts RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J., May 3, 2022 – AlgoSec , the application connectivity and security policy company, announced today the release of its latest product version A32.20. AlgoSec’s A32.20 provides a powerful solution for organizations to manage security in their hybrid and multi-cloud estate. With A32.20, organizations obtain granular application visibility and discovery, allowing them to identify and analyze risk in their multicloud environment, including AWS, GCP and Azure. The key benefits that AlgoSec A32.20 delivers to IT, network and security experts include: Application-based risk analysis in the Cloud Enables SecOps teams to shift focus of risk analysis and remediation efforts to specific business applications beyond risk categories. PAN Prisma access support As an early availability, A32.20 supports Prisma Access visibility for remote networks and service connections, a true industry leading technology of this kind. GCP risk support A32.20 provides advanced capabilities to support discovery of GCP related risks across the hybrid network estate and multiple public clouds Extended support of NSX in AWS As an early availability, A32.20 offers extended cloud support for NSX running on AWS in addition to the existing on-premise support. “With this release, A32.20 offers new powerful cloud coverage, including PAN Prisma access. This gives customers the ability to deploy apps in the cloud and on-premise faster than ever before”, said Eran Shiff, Vice President of Product at AlgoSec. “A32.20 provides a comprehensive solution for organizations to secure application connectivity, reduce risk and ensure continuous compliance while undergoing digital transformation.” About AlgoSec AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity by automating connectivity flows and security policy, anywhere. The AlgoSec platform enables the world’s most complex organizations to gain visibility, reduce risk and process changes at zero-touch across the hybrid network. AlgoSec’s patented application-centric view of the hybrid network enables business owners, application owners, and information security professionals to talk the same language, so organizations can deliver business applications faster while achieving a heightened security posture. Over 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations trust AlgoSec to help secure their most critical workloads across public cloud, private cloud, containers, and on-premises networks, while taking advantage of almost two decades of leadership in Network Security Policy Management. See what securely accelerating your digital transformation, move-to-cloud, infrastructure modernization, or micro-segmentation initiatives looks like at www.algosec.com

  • MIND | AlgoSec

    Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. MIND Automates Firewall Management Operations and Improves The Quality of Service Organization MIND Industry Technology Headquarters Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India Download case study Share Customer
success stories "With AlgoSec, we can analyze the firewall policies more efficiently and spend less time on repetitive and error-prone manual tasks. This automation saves time and man hours by at least five hours per change" Global IT Consulting Company Improves Security and Increases Efficiency by Eliminating Error-prone Manual Firewall Management AlgoSec Business Impact Cut time to plan and implement firewall changes by 50% Network security reporting and audits available at the click of a button Improved risk assessment as part of firewall change process to ensure accuracy Enable existing team to spend more time on other security tasks Background MothersonSumi INfotech and Designs Limited (MIND) is a global provider of end-to-end IT solutions, serving organizations in 24 nations. MIND is certified for ISO 9001:2008, ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and CMM Level 5, and provides consultancy services and solutions for Application Development and Maintenance, IT Infrastructure Management Services, Product Development and Engineering Solutions and helps customers achieve their desired ISO level. Challenge MIND’s complex network consists of many remote locations and is secured with more than 40 firewalls from multiple vendors, including Check Point, Fortinet and Juniper as well as Blue Coat proxies. With hundreds of unnecessary rules in each of the firewalls under management, MIND’s Network Support team members were spending too much time cleaning up the policy rule base. “Cleaning up the policy rule base is a tedious, risky manually-intensive job,” said Santosh Sahoo, Assistant Project Manager at MIND. “Furthermore, we had to evaluate the risks based on best practices or our experience, which was time consuming. We also had to collect and organize this information into the proper reporting format for ISO 27001 requirements.” Additionally, manually planning and implementing firewall changes was a time-consuming and complex process, as was keeping track of all of the changes and updating records for auditing and/or rollback purposes. With all of these challenges, plus increasing network complexity, MIND realized they needed a more efficient method for centrally monitoring and managing all of their security devices and policies. Solution MIND selected the AlgoSec Security Management solution to automate firewall operations across the entire multivendor estate and reduce the resource strain. “There were many reasons why we chose AlgoSec over alternative options. It met all of our requirements by supporting a wider range of devices, providing a dashboard with immediate visibility and more robust policy analysis,” said Harvansh Sagar, GM of IT Infrastructure. Results Since implementing AlgoSec, the MIND team has significantly improved its firewall policy management change processes — from identifying any pre-existing rules in place, to risk assessment, to simulating the change. “AlgoSec has helped us make our our network more secure and has improved our ability to efficiency to manage more client devices with the same resources,” said Sagar. “We are now able to more efficiently analyze the firewall policies, spend less time on repetitive and error-prone manual tasks and perform a risk assessment before approving firewall changes. This automation saves time and man hours by at least five hours per change,” said Santosh. “AlgoSec’s firewall policy analysis has also improved the performance of the firewalls with features like policy tuning, identifying un-used policies and reordering policies.” With AlgoSec, MIND has a complete understanding of what is occurring with the policy across all of their firewalls. “We have a virtual server dedicated to AlgoSec as our management server for all of the firewalls in our environment. It monitors our security policy 24×7 and provides us with real-time alerting for details like ‘who added/modified/removed the rule, what time the policy was pushed,’ etc. Now we have full visibility of what’s going on with these devices,” said Santosh. Using AlgoSec, MIND has also been able to significantly reduce the time to perform audits and ensure compliance. “We can now run an audit report for ISO 27001 out-of-the-box and get a view of the network security policy status in just a click of button.” Schedule time with one of our experts

  • Journey to the Cloud | AlgoSec

    Learn the basics of managing multiple workloads in the cloud and how to create a successful enterprise level security management program Webinars Journey to the Cloud Learn to speed up application delivery across a hybrid cloud environment while maintaining a high level of security Efficient cloud management helps simplify today’s complex network environment, allowing you to secure application connectivity anywhere. But it can be hard to achieve sufficient visibility when your data is dispersed across numerous public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises devices. Today it is easier than ever to speed up application delivery across a hybrid cloud environment while maintaining a high level of security. In this webinar, we’ll discuss: – The basics of managing multiple workloads in the cloud – How to create a successful enterprise-level security management program – The structure of effective hybrid cloud management July 5, 2022 Stephen Owen Esure Group Omer Ganot Product Manager Relevant resources Cloud atlas: how to accelerate application migrations to the cloud Keep Reading A Pragmatic Approach to Network Security Across Your Hybrid Cloud Environment Keep Reading 6 best practices to stay secure in the hybrid cloud Read Document Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

  • Leading Bank | AlgoSec

    Explore Algosec's customer success stories to see how organizations worldwide improve security, compliance, and efficiency with our solutions. Leading Bank Transforms Digitalization Journey With AlgoSec Organization Leading Bank Industry Financial Services Headquarters United States Download case study Share Customer
success stories "AlgoSec is like a person sitting in my bank taking care of everything - simplifying day-to-day operations and reducing human errors because everything is automated.” Background Background The bank is a full-service commercial bank headquartered in India. It offers a wide range of banking and financial products for corporate and retail customers through retail banking and asset management services. The bank offers personal, corporate, and internet banking services including accounts, deposits, credit cards, home loans, and personal loans. The Challenges The client’s key issues related to the management of the firewalls, dealing with rule duplication and human errors. Their network security operations teams were hampered by manual, slow, and error-prone security change-management processes. It often took around four days to process a single change across their complex network environment. The frequent errors that arose from manual processes opened security gaps and put them at risk of cyberattacks. Some of their challenges included: Human errors leading to misconfiguration – The organization was handling over 30 firewalls and 30 to 40 rules in a day across multiple firewalls. They lacked the skilled resources to implement these rule changes. This led to errors and misconfigurations. Lack of visibility – They lacked visibility into their overall network and traffic flows and failed to understand which rules applied to each firewall. Duplicate rules – They had many duplicate firewall policies, negatively impacting performance. Policy optimization – The organization required policies to be frequently optimized. Lack of visibility – The organization needed visibility across their networks, allowing them to quickly find and fix issues. Time-consuming manual change management processes. Solution The organization looked for a partner that understood their challenges, could integrate into their existing solutions, and could take full responsibility for any issues. In the words of the bank’s executive vice president, “ We were looking for a partner, not a product.” The key factors that the bank was looking for were: Alignment with their digital transformation vision – They wanted to align with key stakeholders among business, operations, network, and security teams. Automation as a key focus – Automation was important to reduce human errors, align with the considerable number of requests and adapt to the agile nature of critical applications. With automation, they were looking to implement firewall changes faster. Easy to use and integrate within the existing infrastructure. Unified view of their multi-vendor firewall estate – They wanted a single console where they could see all their firewalls, understand their collective risk, and gain a holistic view of the current state of their firewall policies. As a result, the customer implemented the AlgoSec Security Management Solution. Results: The AlgoSec Security Management Solution transformed the bank’s digitalization journey, leading to: Time to implement rule changes decreased from 4-5 days to less than 48 hours – a 60% reduction. Automatically implemented changes – Changes are automatically implemented, without needing to guess which rules and devices are in path. Reduced human error and elimination of repetitive, manual tasks. Simplified daily operations. Automated change management across application-centric infrastructure. Identified and mitigated risks. Transformed digitization journey. AlgoSec now has end-to-end visibility of which firewall it needs to implement the changes on. The bank was in the process of switching from a traditional infrastructure to Cisco ACI. The transition was smooth. AlgoSec seamlessly integrated into Cisco ACI and their existing Palo Alto Network devices. “I think we are the first in India who approached AlgoSec and got these solutions implemented – getting Cisco ACI, Palo Alto, and AlgoSec working hand in hand with full integration. This is the best thing we’ve seen till now,” noted the vice president. Looking ahead, they plan to extend AlgoSec’s offering, mapping rule applications, and other capabilities to help them migrate to the cloud. Schedule time with one of our experts

  • AlgoSec | Security group architecture for AWS: How to overcome security group limits

    As with all cloud vendors, AWS users share responsibility for securing their infrastructure against risk. Amazon provides the tools you... AWS Security group architecture for AWS: How to overcome security group limits Prof. Avishai Wool 2 min read Prof. Avishai Wool Short bio about author here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. Duis mattis velit sit leo diam. Tags Share this article 8/9/23 Published As with all cloud vendors, AWS users share responsibility for securing their infrastructure against risk. Amazon provides the tools you need to filter traffic, but configuring those tools is up to you. Firewalls are one of the tools you’ll use to filter traffic and secure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instances. Instead of using traditional firewalls, Amazon provides users with AWS security groups, which are flexible, stateful firewalls capable of filtering inbound and outbound traffic. However, there are limits to what you can do with AWS security groups. First, they only allow traffic – you can’t configure them to deny traffic. Second, the maximum number of rules you can set for a single group is 60. This isn’t a big issue for an Amazon EC2 instance designed to address inbound traffic. You’ll either want your AWS EC2 to accept ingress from the entire internet or you’ll want to configure access for a few internal IP addresses. But for outbound traffic, 60 rules simply isn’t enough. You’ll use a dozen of them just allowing access to GitHub’s API . Add in a few third-party partners and you’re already well past the limit. Amazon VPC resource limits explained Amazon sets clear limits on the AWS services and resources it makes available to users. In some cases, you can increase these limits by contacting AWS support. These limits are generally assessed on a per-Region basis. Here are some of the limits Amazon places on AWS users: Security group limits 2500 VPC security groups per Region 60 IPv4 rules per security group 60 IPv6 rules per security group 5 security groups per network interface VPC and subnet limits 5 VPCs per Region 200 Subnets per VPC 5 IPv4 CIDR blocks per VPC 5 IPv6 CIDR blocks per VPC Limits to elastic IP addresses and gateways 5 Elastic IP addresses per Region 2 Elastic IP Addresses per public NAT gateway 5 Egress-only internet gateways per Region 5 NAT gateways per Availability Zone One carrier gateway per VPC Prefix list limits 100 prefix lists per Region 1000 versions per prefix list 5000 prefix list references per resource type Network ACL limits 200 Network ACLs per VPC 20 Rules per Network ACL How to manage AWS cloud security group limits effectively Traditional firewalls may have thousands of security rules, including a complex combination of inbound rules and egress filters. Crucially, they can also enforce outbound rules that include denying traffic – something Amazon does not allow regular security groups to do. While AWS offers powerful tools for securing cloud workflows, Amazon VPC users must find ways to overcome these limitations. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to achieve exactly that. Optimize your VPC security groups. Use Network Access Control Lists to secure assets at the subnet level. Use a domain name filtering system that reduces the number of IP addresses security group rules need to resolve. Optimize your Amazon virtual private cloud configuration Amazon VPC is a virtual network that contains many of the elements you’d expect from a traditional network. It has IP addresses, route tables, subnets, and internet gateways. Unlike a traditional network, you can easily configure many of your VPC environment through a command line interface (CLI). You can establish VPC peering connections, implement identity and access management (IAM) protocols, and configure elastic network interfaces without manually handling any hardware. But first, you need to set up and protect your VPC by setting up and configuring security groups. If you don’t specify a particular group, Amazon EC2 will use the default security group. If you haven’t added new security groups since creating your AWS account, you may only have that one default security group. The first step to optimizing security is expanding the number of security groups you have available. Here’s an example of the code you can use to create a new security group in the AWS console:aws ec2 create-security-group –group-name web-pci-sg –description “allow SSL traffic” –vpc-id vpc-555666777 This creates a new group named web-pci-sg and describes it as a group designed to allow SSL traffic on the network. Remember that security groups don’t support deny rules. Here is the code you would use to add a rule to that group: aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress \ –group-name web-pci-sg \ –protocol https \–port 443 \ –cidr This rule specifically allows SSL traffic using the HTTPS protocol to use port 443, which is the standard port for HTTPS traffic. You can use the last argument to specify the cidr block the rule will direct traffic through. This gives you the ability to manage traffic through specific subnets, which is important for the next step. This example focuses on just one type of rule in one context. To take full advantage of the security tools AWS makes available, you’ll want to create custom rules for endpoints, load balancers, nat gateways, and more. Although you’re limited to 60 rules per security group, creating many groups lets you assign hundreds of rules to any particular instance. Security architecture and network ACLs Network Access Control Lists provide AWS users with additional filtering capabilities. Network ACLs are similar to security groups in many ways, but come with a few key differences: Network ACLs can contain deny rules. You can write Network ACL rules to include explicit actions, like blocking particular IP addresses or routing VPN users in a specific way. Network ACLs are enforced at the subnet level. This means they apply to every instance in the subnet, in addition to whatever rules exist at the security group level. As mentioned above, each Network ACL can contain up to 20 rules. However, you can have up to 200 Network ACLs per VPC, which gives you a total of 4000 potential rules. Along with instance-specific security group rules, this offers much more flexibility for setting up robust AWS security architecture. Since Network ACLs can deny traffic, they are a useful tool for managing access to databases and other sensitive assets. For example, you may wish to exclude users who don’t have the appropriate permissions from your Amazon RDS instance. You may also want to filter SSH (Secure Shell) connections coming from unknown sources, or limit connections between different internal instance types. To do this effectively, you need to group these assets under the same subnet and make sure that the appropriate rules are enabled for all of them. You can also write asset-specific rules at the security group level, ensuring every asset has its own optimal configuration. The larger your AWS environment is, the more complex this process may become. Take care to avoid misconfigurations – it’s very easy to accidentally write security group rules and Network ACL rules that aren’t compatible, or that cause problems when you access the instance. To avoid this, try to condense your rules as much as possible. Avoid limits by filtering domain names directly Although you can create a large number of rules by creating additional security groups, you still may want to add more than 60 rules in a single group. There are many scenarios where this makes more sense than arbitrarily adding (and managing) new groups. For example, you might have a production instance that needs updates from several third-party partners. You also need to periodically change and update the technologies this instance relies on, so you’d like to keep its rules in a single security group. This reduces misconfiguration risk by keeping all the relevant rules in one place – not spread out across multiple groups. To overcome this limit, you need to reduce the number of IP addresses that the security group filters. You can do this by deploying a third-party solution that allows security rules to perform DNS resolution. This eliminates the need for AWS to resolve the domain name. Since AWS security groups can’t compute domain names on their own, you’ll need to deploy a third-party NAT gateway on your public VPC to filter outbound traffic in this way. Once you do this, you can write rules that filter outgoing connections based on their domain name. This effectively bypasses the 60 IP limit because you are not referring to specific IP addresses. At the same time, it simplifies management and makes rules much easier to read and understand. Instead of looking up and adding all of Github’s API IP addresses, you can write rules that reference the domain “Github.com”. If Github decides to change its IP infrastructure, your security rules will automatically reference the new addresses – you won’t have to go back and update them. The earlier you address AWS security group limits, the better There is an unlimited number of ways you can arrange your security groups and Network ACLs. Even in a small environment, the prospect may seem daunting. However, the flexibility Amazon provides to its cloud users is a valuable security feature. Those who go the process enjoy clear security performance benefits. If you start to planning for the architecture of your security and filtering policies early, you’ll be better equipped to scale those policies upwards as your organization grows. This will prevent security processes from becoming a growth bottleneck and maintain a high level of efficiency even as those policies become larger and more complex. See me explain this issue in person in my new whiteboard video: Schedule a demo Related Articles 2025 in review: What innovations and milestones defined AlgoSec’s transformative year in 2025? AlgoSec Reviews Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Navigating Compliance in the Cloud AlgoSec Cloud Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read 5 Multi-Cloud Environments Cloud Security Mar 19, 2023 · 2 min read Speak to one of our experts Speak to one of our experts Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Schedule a call

  • Overcoming the Hybrid Cloud Policy Management Challenge

    Best practices for network security governance in AWS and hybrid network environments Webinars Overcoming the Hybrid Cloud Policy Management Challenge: A Panel Discussion Visibility May 27, 2020 Omer Ganot Product Manager Yonatan Klein irector of Product Management Relevant resources State of cloud security: Concerns, challenges, and incidents Read Document Demystifying Network Security in Hybrid Cloud Environments Keep Reading A Pragmatic Approach to Network Security Across Your Hybrid Cloud Environment Keep Reading Choose a better way to manage your network Choose a better way to manage your network Work email* First name* Last name* Company* country* Select country... Short answer* By submitting this form, I accept AlgoSec's privacy policy Continue

bottom of page